Astounding adventures befall the negro sea-captain, Harry Dean, in his
ill-fated attempt to found an Ethiopian Empire. Some day he will doubtless tell us of his journeys to Scotland and Switzerland, and of the occasion on which he travelled up the Nile to Jinja : but in Umbala (Harrap, 7s. 6d.) the scene is laid in South Africa during the last South African War. Plots and counterplots, intrigue, chicanery, and cold-blooded murder afford material for half a dozen crime-novels. Captain Dean is offered Mozambique for £50,000, and Haji Hassan, I.D.B., cheerfully pays and forfeits £100,000 bail for his wife without incurring suspicion. Sceptics might be disposed to doubt the complete veracity of this nar- rative, but Captain Dean has history to refute them : for he refers to Lerothodi as the King of the Basuto, and it is a fact that Lerothodi succeeded Letsu as paramount chief in 1890, and did not die till 1905. For our part we are captivated by the Pondo dogs, which can pick up a blood trail several days old, and by the gallant recklessness with which Captain Dean shoots blesbok, doves, and grouse while hot on the trail of a man-eating lion. It is tragic, however, that an American negro should be so much further from understanding the African than a sympathetic white.
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